Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is brilliant, hilarious, wonderful and warmly entertaining. The concept is simple and complicated – Tristram Shandy is known as a book that is impossible to adapt for film because of its purposefully jumbled structure (it’s an autobiography that gets so sidelined by tangents and asides that the author never even gets to his own birth), but director Michael Winterbottom and his star Steve Coogan are going to do it anyway. The film is both an adaptation of the 1760 novel and the behind the scenes look at a fictional version of the adaptation – it’s a Moebius strip of meta-storytelling.
Which, apparently, is what Tristram Shandy is anyway. I haven’t read the book, but the film (where Coogan calls the novel “postmodern before there was any modern to be post about”) inspired me to look into it. Shandy is about the essential inability to distill a life in a linear narrative, as well as being about the very conventions of storytelling – and the storyteller’s relationship to the audience. David Foster Wallace, you got sonned three hundred years ago.
There’s no way for a movie to tackle that – except to make a movie about making a movie. This is one of my least favorite genres; filmmakers and Hollywood types are so in love with themselves and what they do that they assume it’s applicable to the lives of the rest of us, and it rarely if ever is. But Tristam Shandy approaches it differently, and deliriously, making it a delight.
Coogan stars as Shandy, and also as Shandy’s father Walter, and also as Steve Coogan, a British comedian looking to leave behind the image of his TV character Alan Partridge and find some international success. His girlfriend is visiting with their infant son, which makes his flirting with his assistant (Naomi Harris, the zombie killing babe from 28 Days Later) very uncomfortable and inappropriate. Meanwhile he’s worried that he’s not getting enough screen time and that his his co-star (or is it co-lead? Or is it supporting performer?) Rob Brydon (Rob Brydon) is coming across as taller.
The chemistry between Coogan and Brydon is unreal. The film opens with the two in make up, as Brydon contemplates the color of his teeth (“Tuscan sunset?” had me in tears), and their back and forth carries most of the film. Every moment the two of them share the screen with their dry as a bone bickering the audience is in an uproar. These two need to get a series of Hope/Crosby type of road movies going IMMEDIATELY. Honestly, the whole movie is worth seeing if just for these two.
Actually, the movie’s worth seeing in general. It’s got a stellar supporting cast, including Shaun of the Dead’s Dylan Moran, the great Jeremy Northam as Mark the director, Ian Hart as the screenwriter who seems to really hate the process, and Gillian Anderson as herself, the big American name brought in to secure additional funding for a battle scene. The making of the movie stuff is done in mockumentary style (sort of like The Office where the presence of a camera isn’t always acknowledged), and the adaptation stuff is done hysterically as well. That aspect has a whole separate layer of meta on – Coogan as Shandy narrates, telling the audience to look out for scenes that will end up on the DVD release.
Tristram Shandy is fast paced, clocking in at 91 minutes, and packed with amazingly great gags and instantly memorable lines. Americans haven’t had a chance to see Steve Coogan at his best yet, and I don’t think many people are going to have a chance to see Tristram Shandy in its theatrical run, but I hope it gets discovered. And I hope Coogan gets discovered by America with it – and that he brings Rob Brydon over here with him, where they can continue their dueling Pacino impressions that run over the end credits of this film. Tristram Shandy is going to be a cult classic, the kind of movie that will be the touchstone for you to decide if someone else is cool and has great taste. This is one of your new favorite comedies.